Boulder B-cycle 'yarn bombers' searching for stolen displays

Group planned to turn cozies into blankets for charity

One week after a covert operation left 11 of Boulder B-cycle's 13 kiosks ensconced in knit cozies, the "yarn bombers" responsible for the act were hit with their own surprise: the cozies were stolen.

Now the rogue knitters are hoping their yarn creations will be returned -- or at the very least, that the yarn's new owners will do something creative and interesting with them.

"Maybe somebody took them to do something cool and unexpected with them. Cool and unexpected would be great," said Jason Fitzgerald, who organized the yarn bombing with his wife, Christina, and co-conspirator Joe Chisholm. "If they show up on other B-cycle kiosks in Denver or somewhere else it the country, that would be neat. We just hope they're not in the Dumpster."

Christina Fitzgerald and her husband, Jason, put a knitted cozy on the B-Cycle kiosk near the Municipal Building last week. The yarn bombers 11 cozies were recently stolen.
(Photo by Joseph D. Chisholm)

Yarn bombing is a subversive phenomenon that has crept across the United States over the past several years as guerilla knitters leave their mark in the urban environment. In Denver, a group known as the Ladies Fancywork Society is responsible for everything from knitting sleeves for bike racks and bench armrests to creating a giant blue ball and chain (made from yarn, of course) for the big blue bear at the Colorado Convention Center.

The recent yarn bombers in Boulder got their start thanks to Christina Fitzgerald.

"My wife is an obsessive-compulsive knitter," Jason Fitzgerald said. "When she finishes a project, she always has a bunch of yarn left."

Christina Fitzgerald first dipped her toe into yarn bombing when she knit a sheath around a tree and a bike rack at work. But soon the couple wanted to do more, and they decided they wanted to do something that would highlight a local business that they believed in. Voil -- the idea for knitting cozies for the B-cycle kiosks was born.

To raise the supplies needed for the project, the pair and their supporters -- through a group they created known as R-U-Engaged -- put out a call on social media this summer for anyone who was interested to send them 1-foot-by-1-foot squares of knitted or crocheted materials. Ultimately, about 200 squares made their way to a post office box set up for R-U-Engaged, and they came from all over the world.

By Labor Day weekend, the completed squares had been sewn together into sheaths that could fit around the kiosks, but left the screens free. Then, on Sept. 4, the band of knitters headed out to leave their wooly mark.

The whimsical cozies were there to greet the public -- and B-cycle staff -- by Monday morning.

"We were as surprised as anyone," said Kevin Crouse, customer service staffer for B-cycle. "First you realize, 'There's something very different about those stations.' We realized right away that there was certainly no reason for us to take them off. It was really nice to look at."

Not everyone liked the new additions, though. The property manager of Twenty Ninth Street mall, J.T. Fulton, asked for the cozy to be taken down once he discovered it, though he said he'd be willing to consider yarn art in the future if he's asked about it in advance.

"We didn't know anything about it," Fulton said. "Not knowing what it was, and not knowing anything about it, we asked for it to be removed."

Fulton also pointed out that Twenty Ninth Street, which donated space for the B-cycle rack, is supportive of the local bike-sharing group.

The city of Boulder also reviewed the knit cozies, though they ultimately decided they could stay wrapped around the kiosks.

"We determined that, at least in the instances we saw, (the cozies) didn't constitute graffiti and wouldn't be prosecuted as graffiti or ticketed as graffiti," said city spokeswoman Jody Jacobson. "The graffiti ordinance actually specifies painting; it doesn't specify yarn."

Even so, the Fitzgeralds and Chisholm had planned to take down the yarn art on Monday and deconstruct the cozies to make blankets that they could donate to charity. But when they showed up to take the cozies back on Monday, they found they were already gone.

Jason Fitzgerald said anyone with information about the missing yarn can contact R-U-Engaged on Facebook or Twitter, or they can call the group at 720-446-YARN or email them at info@r-u-engaged.com.

In the meantime, the Fitzgeralds are already plotting their next yarn attack.

"We are definitely going to do another yarn bomb," Jason Fitzgerald said. "The thing is, we set the bar a little bit higher than we know exactly what to do with."

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